Monday, June 29, 2009

[Speech delivered at Howrah Sarat Sadan on 27 June 2009 on the occasion of the centenary of Sri Aurobindo’s speech The Right of Association.]

Revered Speakers and members of the audience,

Today we have assembled here on this special day to commemorate the centenary of the rendition of Sri Aurobindo’s speech The Right of Association. The Honorable speakers would evaluate The Right of Association through their speeches. I would also like to say a few words on the same topic though the subject-matter of my speech would be a bit different. I would speak on the topic: the relevance of The Right of Association speech in today’s age.

Sri Aurobindo has said that every free nation has three rights. These are: (1) the right of a free Press, (2) the right of free public meeting, and (3) the right of association. The right of free speech is not only the greatest medium of expressing one’s statements but it is also the best medium of self-development and it is through the right of free speech that ideas are expanded and developed. The genuine depiction of ideas leads to the creation of an ideal world. This truth is not limited to the field of politics only but it pervades in humanity as well. When an idea rises from the mind to the levels of consciousness, then, from its movement, takes birth a Force whose strength is unfathomable. That’s why Sri Aurobindo has said:

“The right of speech is cherished because it gives the idea free movement, it gives the nation that power which ensures its future development, which ensures success in any struggle for national life…Then the idea materialises itself, finds means and instruments, conquers all obstacles and goes on developing until it is expressed and established in permanent and victorious forms.”

From the idea takes birth an association and with the association comes its rights. Sri Aurobindo has said that the right of association is such an instrument which enables humanity to grow and proceed towards an integral progress. For the materialization of the progress the presence of three ideas is undeniable. What are they? They are ‘Liberty’, ‘Equality’ and ‘Fraternity’ or brotherhood. These ideas, rather philosophies, were heard for the first time at the time of the French Revolution in 1789. When Sri Aurobindo had delivered his speech on the Right of Association, India had not attained its freedom. In this context let me add that by liberty Sri Aurobindo didn’t mean the freedom of his motherland only; liberty had another meaning to him and that was ‘ultimate emancipation’, meaning mukti or moksha which means freedom from all the narrowness and littleness of the body and spirit which humanity aspires for and we have to seek this freedom not on the exterior plane but within us.

The second pearl of the ocean of idea is Equality. All the religions of the world have taught us that we are one; we are one because we are the children of the same God. It is the only doctrine that Hinduism, Islam and Christianity accept unhesitatingly. Sri Aurobindo has said in this context:

“In the high and the low, in the Brahmin and the Shudra, in the saint and the sinner, there is only one Narayan, one God and he is the soul of all men.”

If we don’t attain the Narayan who resides not only within the Brahmin but within the Shudra as well, not only within the prosperous but within the destitute too, not only within the virtuous but also within the vicious, it would be impossible to be free from the darkness of ignorance.

The next idea is Fraternity or brotherhood. Sri Aurobindo has admitted that the establishment of brotherhood is the toughest task yet its achievement is aspired by all religions and hearts. Not only Sri Aurobindo but also Swami Vivekananda and other saints of the bygone era have preached the message of brotherhood. They did so because they understood that without unity, equality and brotherhood no country in this world, including India, could progress.

If we attempt to evaluate the significance of this speech delivered precisely a hundred years ago and its relevance in today’s era, then we would observe that we still have not been able to accept whole-heartedly the concept of equality and brotherhood Sri Aurobindo had preached. In the past one hundred years, we have undoubtedly made significant progress in various fields but in the field of equality and brotherhood we are stuck in the world that existed a century ago. Discrimination of caste, creed, religion and status—we couldn’t conquer any of the inequalities. From the point of view of technological progress we can compete with any country belonging to the First World but the lack of equality and brotherhood have disallowed us to rise beyond the level of a Third World country. A hundred years ago Sri Aurobindo had predicted the evil effects of the lack of equality and brotherhood. At the same time, he had given the great message—the gospel truth:

“You are all one, you are all brothers. There is one place in which you all meet and that is your common Mother. That is not merely the soil. That is not merely a division of land but it is a living thing. It is the Mother in whom you move and have your being. Realise God in the nation, realise God in your brother, realise God in a wide human association.”

Nowadays we witness the eruption of the fire of violence and the spread of bloodshed almost everywhere in the country. This has happened solely due to the fact that we haven’t been able to tread on the path showed by Sri Aurobindo. A hundred years have passed since the rendition of the Right of Association speech but we have not budged even an inch from where we were a century ago.

We’ve attained the freedom of our motherland. But the establishment of equality and fraternity is yet to be done. The greatest obstacle to its establishment is our ego. Its establishment would not be possible as long as we are unable to conquer our ego. Sri Aurobindo himself has said: “Ego was the helper, ego is the bar.” And this ego has its roots in ignorance. While we have educated ourselves through the textbooks only, we have not been able to educate ourselves in the teaching of the soul and spirit. That is why our minds are still engulfed in darkness and moreover, we have fallen in love with this darkness. When the Sun of Knowledge would rise piercing this darkness of ignorance only then shall we be united. And only then despite the existence of a variety of languages, opinions and costumes marking the regional differences the establishment of Unity in diversity would be an attainable reality.

Come, on this special day let’s all pledge to move on the path showed by Yugarishi Sri Aurobindo and accept his message as the hymn to progress and proceed towards the establishment of equality and brotherhood. Only then would the creation of the India of our dreams be possible. In the words of Dwijendralal Roy (translated by Sri Aurobindo):

“Before us still there floats the ideal of those splendid days of gold:

A new world in our vision wakes, Love’s India we shall rise to mould.”

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

We should note that India's systematic plundering by the British was preceded by 800 years of violent muslim rule that ravaged India. The incursions of Ghazni, Ghor, Timurlane, the lesser known desecration of temples by Tughlaq, Khilji and Aibak, the Jizya tax, the systematic execution of the Sikh Gurus etc plunged the psyche of India into a deep tamas. It is a testimony to the strength of the spirit that sustains India.

The problem that has beseiged India - and still does - is the diversity that is often in conflict with each other, exacerbated further by "dividing the society into endless classes and groups". This has obviously become acute at the end of the conventional age in which India finds itself currently. The harmonious integration and expression of these elements in the future holds great promise for the world. This was the deeper purpose of Nature in the imposition of the British rule in India. In the Master's words

"The whole past of India for the last two thousand years and more has been the attempt, unavailing in spite of many approximations to success, to overcome the centrifugal tendency of an extraordinary number and variety of disparate elements, the family, the commune, the clan, the caste, the small regional state or people, the large linguistic unit, the religious community, the nation within the nation. We may perhaps say that here Nature tried an experiment of unparalleled complexity and potential richness, accumulating all possible difficulties in order to arrive at the most opulent result. But in the end the problem proved insoluble or, at least, was not solved and Nature had to resort to her usual deus ex machina denouement, the instrumentality of a foreign rule."

We are already witnessing the rise from the slumber of Tamas into Rajas, but Rajas moved by Satwa in which the Indian temperament takes it natural repose.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

[1] Surendra Mohan Ghosh, M.P. and a leader of Bengal Congress was a direct political disciple of Sri Aurobindo in the early part of the century belonging to the Jugantar Revolutionary group. In later life, he was a frequent visitor to Sri Aurobindo Ashram and had several personal exclusive interviews with Sri Aurobindo from 1948 to 1950. He also acted as a political liaison between Sri Aurobindo and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and National Congress leaders of the period.

The task is implementation, and it is to accomplish that that the enlightened society should prepare itself. A force has been released into operation and the obligation is we receive it and let it work within us. Perhaps in it is the key to tackle all the problems that arise due to various types and grades of antagonism, problems also perpetrated by all kinds of degenerate attitudes. But let us read Sri Aurobindo. ~ RYD

Ned Thanks for your perceptive response... Placing Mahomed and Islam in a new light was on the agenda; but Sri Aurobindo could not unfold it to us—as within months he had to take the divine refuge in Pondicherry. But if we have to practise what I may call “Applied Sri Aurobindo” in the Aurobindonian spirit, if we have assimilated his principles well enough, then certain lines of approach could be pretty clearly visualized.

Let us talk of the early days of the authentic Independence Movement. Those were the days of great leaders who shaped the destiny, those who really were extraordinary visionaries, the exceptional beings. The history that got written later was by the lesser souls, much lesser than we imagine them to be. Independence from the colonial rule was never envisaged in those days along the lines of division. Sri Aurobindo had categorically rejected the 1916 Lucknow Pact. Much later, after the fissured Independence, Sri Aurobindo told KM Munshi—he was his student in Baroda—that the Partition was because of the blatant play of falsehood, fraud and force, these entering into picture both in the political and occult sense. If they have the occult origin then no political approach is going to solve the problem. Towards that occult we can, however, prepare ourselves in various ways. That’s a long way, but perhaps that’s the only way. We can get hints about it from the writings of Sri Aurobindo. That is what I mean by “Applied Sri Aurobindo”. ~ RYD Reply

This is most often the ground of self-justification. Degrees of sincerity at the individual level may be there, but identification with group myths (having sometimes long histories) give a kind of irrational strength which feels bolstered in its numbers to hold itself out as Truth and justify violence in its name and for its defence. This is in fact one of the most pernicious problems of the Modern Age of plurality, where pre-modern symbol systems of all kinds have become mental constructs which individuals substitute for personal identity and feel comforted. If these are challenged, there is a refusal to see that one is defending an irrational structure which has imposed itself through a mental construct as a displaced identity. All such symbol systems (or at least some of them) may be valid descriptions of the Truth, but their validity exists for subjective choice and experience. When they become means for determining subjectivity and forming subjects, they have fossilized into ideology - religious, political or otherwise. All such ideologies speak in the name of the One, the Total, and justify all manner of irrationality in its name.

Whereas by dint of his experience, Sri Aurobindo holds out a phenomenological metaphysics relating a mental experience of time to a modality of consciousness based in omnitemporality, the reification of such an articulation, erasing the phenomenology and capturing the metaphysics as orthodoxy is a most predicatble outcome and infinitely dangerous due the very totalistic basis of its realization. This totalism becomes vulnerable to a totalitarianism without an unceasing insistence on the phenomenological practice of the alienness of the familiar. Practices of everyday life are such practices which by their invocation of the uninstitutionalizable propel the reality of Being under erasure. DBReply

In the last part of that century we overextended ourselves in many ways, as all empires do. The intensified power of the great, organized interests—since the advent of neo-liberalism, the immense corporations—created a large permanent national government joined at the hip with private powers. Globalization has been the result of that neo-liberalism, and helped transform the United States into the debtor nation that it now is. This development, coupled with an increasingly polarized political climate that was in part brought about by that very growth, and that has been exacerbated by the emergence of new forms of electronic media, has increasingly diminished the ability of presidents over this secular time to fundamentally shift the direction of government. [...]

When Obama said, "Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism---these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history," he was of course evoking the idea of American exceptionalism, a claim that we are possessed of distinctive values that, in times of crisis, come to the fore, and then inspire us to save our sorry asses.

Presidents are compelled to use the language of exceptionalism in two important ways. If our presidents are to be believed, we are always doing something New and something Great. We have had, in the past eighty years, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, the New Nixon, Morning in America, A Thousand Points of Light, a New Covenant, a Bridge to Tomorrow, and Compassionate Conservatism, and now we have a New Foundation. These slogans are made to do a lot of work, in that they suggest another word that became the brand of the Obama campaign last year: change.

This rhetoric reflects an interesting fact: while it is common for us to claim that there is no real progressivism in the United States anymore, the truth is that both ruling parties for the past eighty years have had to envelop themselves in a rhetoric of progressive change or transformation in order to be credible with the American people, who are deeply addicted to Newness and Greatness.

At the same time, and indeed as a part of the rhetoric of exceptionalism, presidents constantly invoke the Constitution as the rock upon which this church of America is built. The Constitution, whether you believe it to be a living document (Justice Breyer) or a dead one (Justice Scalia), is the ultimate foundation upon which all renewal is supposed to take place. No one can question it, especially the core of it, though many are incredibly inventive in interpreting it.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

OBAMAWORLD APOSTASY & MALIGNANT NARCISSISMfromDr. SanityThe state of political discourse in this country was bad enough, with the ubiquitous personal attacks that have become the trademark of all political campaigns; but Barack Obama has taken this to a higher plane of being-- and destroying.

Politics still occasionally brings out those who have strong personal integrity and values; but it is the people of no integrity and no values who are obsessively attracted to the field and are triumphant--and that is true on both sides of the political spectrum. By that, I mean that those who would actually make the best leaders generally opt out of the process, because they tend to be too healthy to generate the continual rage necessary to destroy all opponents; or they lack the required-- and mostly distorted --sense of personal "perfection" and grandiosity that drives the power-hungry.

I am frequently reminded that it is hopelessly naive these days to expect the electorate to vote for a person based on what that person actually stands for; or even based on the character (we don't need no stinkin' character in our politicians); instead, these days most people respond to the negative campaign ads that slice and dice the other guy; and are mainly influenced by botoxed faces and Hollywood-packaged good-looks rather than the content of any candidate's character. The less they know of that character, the better!

And, despite all efforts to hide the truth about Obama's weak and unprincipled character, there was still plenty of information available to be able to see that the emperor messiah had no clothes. Real personal integrity and character comes from having a consistent set of values and exhibiting behavior driven by those values. Today's classic narcissistically-driven politicians like both Hillary and Bill can only flutter in the political winds, and zelig-like easily take on whatever characteristics their public care to project onto them. This is not the kind of person who can face real threats in the real world very effectively because this is not the kind of person who can effectively deal with threats they do not perceive as personal--why should they care much about any other kind, unless the polls indicate they should?.

Hillary Clinton, for example, did not get where she is today by being a person of integrity, honesty and courage--she got there by riding on the coattails of her charismatic husband; and by shrewdly altering her opinions to accommodate the prevailing political winds. And, oh yes, by ruthlessly destroying whoever got in her way. And even her base is able to recognize this about her, although she is extremely careful never to dirty her own hands. Like the Hamas and Hezbollah gunmen who shield themselves with innocent women and children, Hillary and her spouse have always had a ready supply of useful fall-guys (recall Vince Foster's suicide or Sandy Berger's recent archival exploits, for example) to take responsibility for their misdeeds.

In fact, the Clinton's narcissism became way to overexposed and obvious. In reality, they paved the way for a candidate like Obama, who initially was so attractive because the same leftists who once adored Hillary began to find her to be too obvious and coarse. Instead, they dropped her and swung over to the unknown, tabula rasa candidate on whom they are able to project their own fantasies without any intrusion by harsh reality. The antics of the Clintons during their run in power seem almost benign and innocent by comparison. We have a real demagogue in office now.

The best leaders are not obsessed with themselves; with polls; or with accumulating power by pandering to all sides. Those leaders may, in truth, have many other personal flaws--but not particularly of the dangerously malignant narcissistic variety. Whatever those flaws (and we all possess them), they are characterologically able to be more concerned about dealing with external reality; rather than in preserving a distorted and fragile internal one. Avenging petty slights and insults is not a high priority to a psychologically healthy person. Those healthy individuals are far more likely to direct their psychological energy toward dealing with real-world geopolitical threats that endanger both their country and the people they have the responsibility to protect; rather than using that country or the power of their office to counter threats to their endangered self and act on their grandiose fantasies about themselves.

The latter is the same psychological pathology that is rampant among dictators and dictator wannabes of all stripes. Their concern about others in their group/nation is purely of the “l’état c’est moi” variety. Look at Saddam's behavioral legacy. Observe the recent behaviors of Ahmadinejad or Chavez or Kim Jong Il -- or any of the other despots and thugs that somehow claw their way up to the top of the food chain in their respective countries.

That the needs of the nation, or the people they serve, might be different from their own; or that doing the right thing is often different from doing the popular thing, are foreign and dangerous concepts. The only reality they know--or care about--is the one inside themselves. Welcome to Obamaworld.

The Ideal of the KarmayoginA NATION is building in India today before the eyes of the world so swiftly, so palpably that all can watch the process and those who have sympathy and intuition distinguish the forces at work, the materials in use, the lines of the divine architecture. This nation is not a new race raw from the workshop of Nature or created by modern circumstances. One of the oldest races and greatest civilisations on this earth, the most indomitable in vitality, the most fecund in greatness, the deepest in life, the most wonderful in potentiality, after taking into itself numerous sources of strength from foreign strains of blood and other types of human civilisation, is now seeking to lift itself for good into an organised national unity. Formerly a congeries of kindred nations with a single life and a single culture, always by the law of this essential oneness tending to unity, always by its excess of fecundity engendering fresh diversities and divisions, it has never yet been able to overcome permanently the almost insuperable obstacles to the organisation of a continent. The time has now come when those obstacles can be overcome. The attempt which our race has been making throughout its long history, it will now make under entirely new circumstances. A keen observer would predict its success because the only important obstacles have been or are in the process of being removed. But we go farther and believe that it is sure to succeed because the freedom, unity and greatness of India have now become necessary to the world. This is the faith in which the Karmayogin puts its hand to the work and will persist in it, refusing to be discouraged by difficulties however immense and apparently insuperable. We believe that God is with us and in that faith we shall conquer. We believe that humanity needs us and it is the love and service of humanity, of our country, of the race, of our religion that will purify our heart and inspire our action in the struggle.

The task we set before ourselves is not mechanical but moral and spiritual. We aim not at the alteration of a form of government but at the building up of a nation. Of that task politics is a part, but only a part. We shall devote ourselves not to politics alone, nor to social questions alone, nor to theology or philosophy or literature or science by themselves, but we include all these in one entity which we believe to be all-important, the dharma, the national religion which we also believe to be universal. There is a mighty law of life, a great principle of human evolution, a body of spiritual knowledge and experience of which India has always been destined to be guardian, exemplar and missionary. This is the sanatana dharma, the eternal religion. Under the stress of alien impacts she has largely lost hold not of the structure of that dharma, but of its living reality. For the religion of India is nothing if it is not lived. It has to be applied not only to life, but to the whole of life; its spirit has to enter into and mould our society, our politics, our literature, our science, our individual character, affections and aspirations. To understand the heart of this dharma, to experience it as a truth, to feel the high emotions to which it rises and to express and execute it in life is what we understand by Karmayoga. We believe that it is to make the yoga the ideal of human life that India rises today; by the yoga she will get the strength to realise her freedom, unity and greatness, by the yoga she will keep the strength to preserve it. It is a spiritual revolution we foresee and the material is only its shadow and reflex.

The European sets great store by machinery. He seeks to renovate humanity by schemes of society and systems of government; he hopes to bring about the millennium by an act of Parliament. Machinery is of great importance, but only as a working means for the spirit within, the force behind. The nineteenth century in India aspired to political emancipation, social renovation, religious vision and rebirth, but it failed because it adopted Western motives and methods, ignored the spirit, history and destiny of our race and thought that by taking over European education, European machinery, European organisation and equipment we should reproduce in ourselves European prosperity, energy and progress. We of the twentieth century reject the aims, ideals and methods of the Anglicised nineteenth precisely because we accept its experience. We refuse to make an idol of the present; we look before and after, backward to the mighty history of our race, forward to the grandiose destiny for which that history has prepared it.

We do not believe that our political salvation can be attained by enlargement of Councils, introduction of the elective principle, colonial self-government or any other formula of European politics. We do not deny the use of some of these things as instruments, as weapons in a political struggle, but we deny their sufficiency whether as instruments or ideals and look beyond to an end which they do not serve except in a trifling degree. They might be sufficient if it were our ultimate destiny to be an outlying province of the British Empire or a dependent adjunct of European civilisation. That is a future which we do not think it worth making any sacrifice to accomplish. We believe on the other hand that India is destined to work out her own independent life and civilisation, to stand in the forefront of the world and solve the political, social, economical and moral problems which Europe has failed to solve, yet the pursuit of whose solution and the feverish passage in that pursuit from experiment to experiment, from failure to failure she calls her progress. Our means must be as great as our ends and the strength to discover and use the means so as to attain the end can only be found by seeking the eternal source of strength in ourselves.

We do not believe that by changing the machinery so as to make our society the ape of Europe we shall effect social renovation. Widow-remarriage, substitution of class for caste, adult marriage, intermarriages, interdining and the other nostrums of the social reformer are mechanical changes which, whatever their merits or demerits, cannot by themselves save the soul of the nation alive or stay the course of degradation and decline. It is the spirit alone that saves, and only by becoming great and free in heart can we become socially and politically great and free.

We do not believe that by multiplying new sects limited within the narrower and inferior ideas of religion imported from the West or by creating organisations for the perpetuation of the mere dress and body of Hinduism we can recover our spiritual health, energy and greatness. The world moves through an indispensable interregnum of free thought and materialism to a new synthesis of religious thought and experience, a new religious world-life free from intolerance, yet full of faith and fervour, accepting all forms of religion because it has an unshakable faith in the One. The religion which embraces Science and faith, Theism, Christianity, Mahomedanism and Buddhism and yet is none of these, is that to which the World-Spirit moves. In our own, which is the most sceptical and the most believing of all, the most sceptical because it has questioned and experimented the most, the most believing because it has the deepest experience and the most varied and positive spiritual knowledge, — that wider Hinduism which is not a dogma or combination of dogmas but a law of life, which is not a social framework but the spirit of a past and future social evolution, which rejects nothing but insists on testing and experiencing everything and when tested and experienced turning it to the soul's uses, in this Hinduism we find the basis of the future world-religion. This sanatana dharma has many scriptures, Veda, Vedanta, Gita, Upanishad, Darshana, Purana, Tantra, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran; but its real, most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has His dwelling. It is in our inner spiritual experiences that we shall find the proof and source of the world's Scriptures, the law of knowledge, love and conduct, the basis and inspiration of Karmayoga.

Our aim will therefore be to help in building up India for the sake of humanity — this is the spirit of the Nationalism which we profess and follow. We say to humanity, “The time has come when you must take the great step and rise out of a material existence into the higher, deeper and wider life towards which humanity moves. The problems which have troubled mankind can only be solved by conquering the kingdom within, not by harnessing the forces of Nature to the service of comfort and luxury, but by mastering the forces of the intellect and the spirit, by vindicating the freedom of man within as well as without and by conquering from within external Nature. For that work the resurgence of Asia is necessary, therefore Asia rises. For that work the freedom and greatness of India is essential, therefore she claims her destined freedom and greatness, and it is to the interest of all humanity, not excluding England, that she should wholly establish her claim.”

We say to the nation, “It is God's will that we should be ourselves and not Europe. We have sought to regain life by following the law of another being than our own. We must return and seek the sources of life and strength within ourselves. We must know our past and recover it for the purposes of our future. Our business is to realise ourselves first and to mould everything to the law of India's eternal life and nature. It will therefore be the object of the Karmayogin to read the heart of our religion, our society, our philosophy, politics, literature, art, jurisprudence, science, thought, everything that was and is ours, so that we may be able to say to ourselves and our nation, ‘This is our dharma.’ We shall review European civilisation entirely from the standpoint of Indian thought and knowledge and seek to throw off from us the dominating stamp of the Occident; what we have to take from the West we shall take as Indians. And the dharma once discovered we shall strive our utmost not only to profess but to live, in our individual actions, in our social life, in our political endeavours.”

We say to the individual and especially to the young who are now arising to do India's work, the world's work, God's work, “You cannot cherish these ideals, still less can you fulfil them if you subject your minds to European ideas or look at life from the material standpoint. Materially you are nothing, spiritually you are everything. It is only the Indian who can believe everything, dare everything, sacrifice everything. First therefore become Indians. Recover the patrimony of your forefathers. Recover the Aryan thought, the Aryan discipline, the Aryan character, the Aryan life. Recover the Vedanta, the Gita, the Yoga. Recover them not only in intellect or sentiment but in your lives. Live them and you will be great and strong, mighty, invincible and fearless. Neither life nor death will have any terrors for you. Difficulty and impossibility will vanish from your vocabularies. For it is in the spirit that strength is eternal and you must win back the kingdom of yourselves, the inner Swaraj, before you can win back your outer empire. There the Mother dwells and She waits for worship that She may give strength. Believe in Her, serve Her, lose your wills in Hers, your egoism in the greater ego of the country, your separate selfishness in the service of humanity. Recover the source of all strength in yourselves and all else will be added to you, social soundness, intellectual preeminence, political freedom, the mastery of human thought, the hegemony of the world.” Karmayogin. 19th June 1909 No.1

‘Relevance of Sri Aurobindo’s ideologies has increased’Express News Service : 01 Jun 2009 11:09:53 AM ISTTHIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The relevance of the ideologies of Sri Aurobindo has increased in the present society, Bharatiya Vichara Kendram director P Parameswaran has said.He was inaugurating the centenary celebrations of the `Uttarpara’ speech by Sri Aurobindo organised by the Sri Aurobindo Cultural Society in Thiruvananthapuram on Saturday."In the present society, where the communist vision has failed and capitalism has suffered crisis, philosophies of Sri Aurobindo are very much significant. What India should be after Independence was the content of the famous `Utharappara’ speech made by Aurobindo,’’ Parameswarji said.Sri Aurobindo Cultural Society president O Rajagopal presided over the function. Poet Vishnu Narayanan Namboothiri also attended the function.

E Pluribus Unum by Lori Tompkins The Vedic realization of the One that is equal to the Many has been recalled by Indian sage Sri Aurobindo (1872 – 1950):. ‘We see that the Absolute, the Self, the Divine, the Spirit, the Being is One; the Transcendental is one, ... 12:17 PM